Date

agricultural pest programs Articles

A wide range of pests threaten Northeastern apple crops, forcing some growers to spend up to 25 percent of production costs to manage mites, insects, disease and other pests. Practical strategies to help growers lower this huge cost while protecting their region’s $580 million annual apple crop are outlined in ...

A new report released by the Pacific Institute and the California Green Scissors project makes the case for changing the way pesticides are regulated in California. According to the report, if California significantly increased its funding for sustainable agriculture -- instead of just spending money to regulate pesticide usage -- we could aid California farmers, improve the public health and ...

Global poultry production has more than quadrupled since 1970, with the United States leading the flock. However, due to the rising demand for chicken and other poultry, avian influenza, or ‘bird flu,’ outbreaks have occurred at an accelerated rate, causing concern across the agricultural industry. Most alarmingly is the fact that the 2014 bird flu virus killed nearly 50 million ...

Field schools that train farmers in alternative methods of pest control have succeeded in nearly eliminating the use of toxic pesticides by a community of cotton growers in Mali, according to a new FAO study published today by the London-based Royal Society. The study was conducted in two areas - the Bla ...

Like so many other regulatory programs in China, pesticide regulations are changing. At the 8th China High-Level Forum on Pesticides, Ying Ji, Chief Agronomist of the Institute for the Control of Agrochemicals, Ministry of Agriculture (ICAMA), stated that the future of pesticide regulation in China will see more emphasis placed on industrial development, registration security, the application of ...

Received for publication April 15, 2009. The ability to inventory and map soil salinity at regional scales remains a significant challenge to scientists concerned with the salinization of agricultural soils throughout the world. Previous attempts to use satellite or aerial imagery to assess soil salinity have found limited success in part because of the inability of methods to isolate the effects ...

From contentious hunger estimates to trends in agriculture, Zareen Pervez Bharucha outlines a range of resources. Hunger, malnutrition and food insecurity The website of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations is a key resource and offers access to several reports on hunger and ...

Next month’s Greenhouse Canada Grower Day is welcoming leading researchers and crop specialists to help you tackle one of the industry’s biggest challenges. Whitefly is proving to be one of the most difficult pests to control, mainly due to the lack of effective registered chemicals that can eradicate silverleaf whitefly. It is also due to the unwillingness of biological suppliers to ...

If left untreated, slugs can cost the potato industry £53 million each year. With predictions of a high pressure slug season ahead, and the potential damage these pests can do to a crop both physically and financially, Robert Boothman, commercial director of Boothmans Agriculture, explains how to keep one step ahead of the pest. “The milder, wet winter and lack of ground frosts ...

Honeybee waggle dancers are helping researchers identify conservation best practices. The question scientists at the University of Sussex in the U.K. had was simple: Where do honeybees find food? But finding a way to answer that simple question seemed not so simple. Tiny radio or GPS trackers have a limited range, and it would take huge amount of work to survey fields on foot. Instead, ...

Yes — if we make sure economic growth, social justice and agriculture are part of the picture. From 2005 to 2014, the rate of deforestation in the Amazon rainforest went from 19,014 square kilometers (7,342 square miles) to 5,012 square kilometers (1,935 square miles): a reduction of about 70 percent. Impressive, to be sure, but the rate still remains high. Additionally, ...

While the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) reports a 40 percent decline in U.S. cropland soil erosion rates from 1982 to 2007, recent trends appear to challenge this progress. Record prices for corn and soybeans have diverted acres out of conservation programs and encouraged intensive production on a wide scale. Tree lines are cleared and wet areas drained, turning 120-acre farms into ...

Herbicides, insecticides and fungicides threaten the environment and human health in many parts of the world. But research is pointing to a better approach. In today’s globalized world, it is not inconceivable that one might drink coffee from Colombia in the morning, munch cashews from Vietnam for lunch and gobble grains from Ethiopia for dinner. That we can enjoy these ...

Can science meet the demand for more diverse and nutritious food? Jan Piotrowski investigates. The riots that swept Africa in 2007 and 2008 in response to the spiralling costs of staple crops brought the effects of food shortages into sharp focus. Images of unrest circled the globe, and the consequent instability brought to the forefront of political debate a question that had ...

Is synthetic biology on its way to our farms, markets and tables? Thousands of researchers will descend on Boston this fall for an event billed as the world’s largest gathering of synthetic biologists. The field is evolving so rapidly that even scientists working in it ...

Heat and drought continue to blanket the United States, leaving 54 percent of the nation’s pasture and rangeland, 38 percent of its corn crop, and 30 percent of soybeans in “poor” or “very poor” condition. As of the end of June, 55 percent of the contiguous U.S. was experiencing moderate or extreme drought – the most ...

Around the world, plant breeders are resisting what they see as corporate control of the food supply by making seeds available for other breeders to use. Frank Morton has been breeding lettuce since the 1980s. His company offers 114 varieties, among them Outredgeous, which last year became the first plant that ...

An honest discussion of genetically modified organisms must move beyond narrow concepts of human health to the wider social and environmental impacts of engineered crops. The GMO debate is one from which I’ve kept a purposeful distance. For one thing, it’s an issue that has already garnered more than its fair share of attention. For another, when you consider that many ...